Thursday, 16 April 2015

DIGITAL LIBRARY

DIGITAL LIBRARY.

Introduction:

Information and Communication
Technology has revolutionized the concept of libraries. Each and every library
is slowly getting digitized. A 'digital library' comprises digital collections,
services and infrastructure to support lifelong learning, research, scholarly
communication as well as preservation and conservation of our recorded
knowledge. It is also a process of democratization of information.

This article
will discuss the factors that will necessitate the traditional libraries to get
digitized, as well as the definition, advantages and disadvantages of digital
libraries, the requirement for building a digital library etc.

We are in the age of a networked
society where information technology in addition to its use in all spheres of
human activity has been used extensively to record, store, and disseminate the
information in the digital form. Information technology has almost converted
the world into a global village. The revolution in the information technology
sector is influencing medical information and information . Libraries are also
changing to meet the demand put on them. The new generation whose demand for
information is never met is always demanding that traditional libraries should
be developed as a well equipped and interconnected as digital libraries.

What is digital library?

According to Arms a digital
library is a managed collection of information with associated services where
the information is stored in digital format and accessible over a network.

A digital library is an organized
collection of digitized material or it’s holding in the digital form, which can
be accessible by a computer on the network by using TCP/IP or other protocol.

Digital library: It is a later stage
of electronic library. In digital library high speed optical fiber are used for
LAN and the access is over WAN and provide a wide range of Internet based
services i.e. audio and video conferencing and like other. The majority of the
holding of a digital library is in the computer readable form and also acts as
a point of access to other on line sources.

Requirement for digital libraries

The Internet and World Wide Web
provide the impetus and technological environment for the development and
operation of a digital library. The Internet provides the TCP/IP and or its
associated protocol for accessing the information and web provide tools and
technique for publishing the information over Internet. In the digital
environment it is reasonable to say that a central back up or archive should be
created at the national level, which will store information out put of the
region as well as information from out side the country. Some of the
requirement for a digital libraries are:

Software:
Any suitable software, which is interconnected and suitable for LAN and
WAN connection.PC

Factors of change to digital
libraries

The limited buying power of
libraries, complex nature of recent document, storage problem etc are some of
the common factor which are influencing to change to digital mode, some other
factors are-

Information explosion

Searching problem in traditional libraries

Low cost of technology: When we consider the storage
capacity of digital document and its maintained then it can be easily
realize that the cost of technologies is much more less than that of
traditional libraries.

Environmental factor: the use of digital libraries is
the cleanest technologies to fulfill the slogan “Burn a CD-ROM save a
tree”

New generation needs

Advantages of the Digital Library

A digital library is not confined to
a particular location or so called building it is virtually distributed all
over the world. The user can get his/ her information on his own computer
screen by using the Internet. Actually it is a network of multimedia system,
which provides fingertip access.

No physical boundary:
The user of a digital library need not to go to the library physically,
people from all over the world could gain access to the same information,
as long as an Internet connection is available.

Round the clock availability: Digital libraries can be accessed at any time, 24
hours a day and 365 days of the year

Multiple accesses:
The same resources can be used at the same time by a number of users.

Structured approach:
Digital library provides access to much richer content in a more
structured manner i.e. we can easily move from the catalog to the
particular book then to a particular chapter and so on.

Information retrieval:
The user is able to use any search term bellowing to the word or phrase of
the entire collection. Digital library will provide very user friendly
interfaces, giving click able access to its resources.

Preservation and conservation: An exact copy of the original can be made any number
of times without any degradation in quality.

Space:
Whereas traditional libraries are limited by storage space, digital
libraries have the potential to store much more information, simply
because digital information requires very little physical space to contain
them. When the library had no space for extension digitization is the only
solution.

Networking:
A particular digital library can provide the link to any other resources
of other digital library very easily thus a seamlessly integrated resource
sharing can be achieved.

Cost
- The cost of maintaining a digital library is much lower than that of a
traditional library. A traditional library must spend large sums of money
paying for staff, book maintains, rent, and additional books. Digital
libraries do away with these fees.

Disadvantages of the Digital Library

The computer viruses, lack of
standardization for digitized information, quick degrading properties of
digitized material, different display standard of digital product and its
associated problem, health hazard nature of the radiation from monitor etc.
makes digital libraries at times handicap.

Copyright:
- Digitization violates the copy right law as the thought content of one
author can be freely transfer by other without his acknowledgement. So One
difficulty to overcome for digital libraries is the way to distribute
information. How does a digital library distribute information at will
while protecting the copyright of the author?

Speed of access:
- As more and more computer are connected to the Internet its speed of
access reasonably decreasing. If new technology will not evolve to solve
the problem then in near future Internet will be full of error messages.

Band width:
- Digital library will need high band for transfer of multimedia resources
but the band width is decreasing day by day due to its over utilization.

Efficiency:
- With the much larger volume of digital information, finding the right
material for a specific task becomes increasingly difficult.

Environment:
- Digital libraries cannot reproduce the environment of a traditional
library. Many people also find reading printed material to be easier than
reading material on a computer screen.

Preservation:
- Due to technological developments, a digital library can rapidly become
out-of-date and its data may become inaccessible.

Conclusion

Digital libraries are not going to
replace the physical existence of document completely but no doubt to meet the
present demand, to satisfy the non local user digitization must be introduced
so that at least libraries becomes of hybrid nature. The initial cost of
digitization is high but experiment shows that once digitization is introduced
then the cost to manage this collection will be cheaper than that of any
traditional library. Day by day the cost of digitization is decreasing, the
online publication is increasing, the needs of user are shifting towards a
different environment so it's needless to say that after one or two years my
library or your library will go to be digitized so it’s the pick time to all
informational and library professional that they geared themselves to take the
challenge.